


Magic in a Bard

by sardonic_soprano



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (fight me on the spelling), (it has two n's), Angst, M/M, So this is just some, and my first piece of creative writing since like eighth grade, let's see how it goes, yayy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 21:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16103738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sardonic_soprano/pseuds/sardonic_soprano
Summary: But to Avi, that magic was never restricted to Johann’s music.





	Magic in a Bard

**Author's Note:**

> This was born because it was 12:30am and I had a lot of feelings about Johann the bard. I still do.

There’s magic in a bard’s song.

But to Avi, that magic was never restricted to Johann’s music. It bled through his words as he spoke, dripped out in the movement of his limbs, spilled forth from the gaze of a man who knew his value but not his worth.

Avi knew Johann’s worth.

And Avi felt the magic the permeated Johann’s existence, too. Though maybe it wasn’t a physical presence, something about the bard beckoned him close the way the earth beckons a falling star. And fall he certainly did. 

It started with shared lunches, light-hearted bickering and small talk--

“Gods, I don’t understand how you stomach this every day.”  
“Eh. Better than the high school cafeteria.”

Grew into late-night conversations about ethics and the Big Questions, things that can’t be spoken in the daytime for fear of what answers the sun might expose--

“Do you ever think… that everything we choose is pointless? That, no matter how much good we try to do, there are hundreds of bad things waiting to balance it all out?”  
“Avi, I know that everything I do is pointless. That shouldn’t stop you from doing it.”

Nurtured by months of existing in the same space, one pretending to draw while actually just listening, appreciating the other’s plucked notes and pencil scratches as a new melody is born--

“Hey. Johann, come look. Look! It’s you!”  
“That’s just a frowny face with quarter notes for eyes… you’re an asshole.”  
“That’s why you love me.”

And sometimes, in the silence of night, gazing at stars that were too close yet still so very far away, Avi would let his hand rest next to Johann’s and everything felt okay. And sometimes it wasn’t okay, but Avi would grasp Johann’s hand as if it was the only thing holding him together, and say it was anyway. 

Some days, the magic surrounding Johann the bard was dim. His sunken eyes and unwashed hair did not allure passersby as they had before, months, years ago, but Avi still went. Still fell like a shooting star toward the cold, gray earth and welcomed the embrace as he landed. Landing often hurt because as the ground was not created to greet falling rocks, Johann the bard was not always prepared for affection. But Avi landed anyway, because here was a man who chose to sacrifice the most intimate creations of his soul, and somebody had to remember them all. 

Fate has a twisted sense of justice. For just as Johann poured the last drops of his soul into a battle cry against irrelevance… 

Numbness crawls up Avi’s body, starting from his toes and slowly metastasizing upward the moment he sees the empty shell that once held his everything. Within the week, his head is paralyzed and nothing makes sense anymore.

And here, now, everyone knows of the man who sacrificed everything to be heard. They laud him as one of the champions of the universe, the man who died to bring hope in a wave of light across the land. They shout praises of the music that saved the world. They see the magic in the song. “His sacrifice will live forever,” they say with gleaming smiles.

They do not understand the sacrifice of which they speak. They do not tell tales about the stretch of his arm, the catch in his voice, the depths of his eyes. The love of his friend.

And only one man will mourn the one who sacrificed everything for the world, and received Nothing in return.


End file.
